


Following in Her Footsteps

by WordsByCato



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Antarctica, Brigitte calls Hana her "bunny", Briva, Cute gays, Ecopoint: Antarctica, F/F, Fangirl Hana, Fluff, Hana was not prepared for this level of physical excercise, I told you - cute gays, Mei's journals, MekaMechanic, Military leave, POV Third Person, Slice of Life, Vacation, bits of Swedish, mekanic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 06:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15018431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WordsByCato/pseuds/WordsByCato
Summary: Hana needed a vacation, badly.  When she finally got a few weeks leave, she decided to follow one of her favorite authors and go on a rather unconventional vacation.  Thankfully, she had company.My first work on here!  Would love some feedback!Also:Älskling is Swedish for "Darling"Kanin is Swedish for "bunny" or "rabbit"





	Following in Her Footsteps

She knew it would be beautiful, and it was, but she had underestimated how bright it would be. Sunlight poured down onto the endless fields of crystalline snow and ice. It was serene and silent and gorgeous. And blinding.  


Hana Song wiggled her nose and squinted, her breath coming in warm puffs of air within the thick woollen scarf wrapped around her neck. Her body ached, even this early in the morning. They had been moving at a good pace, their expedition leader told them. It felt like somehow they had covered an impossibly long distance, and gotten nowhere at all. Vast, glittering ice only gave way to more endless seas of snow. Mountains jutted up angrily, their grey faces quiet as death.  


“Only two more hours,” came a cheerful voice from behind her.  


Hana scowled, or tried to, but when it came to that voice, getting mad was hard.  


“Then we’ll stop for lunch!”  


Hana wanted to look back and stick her tongue out at the speaker, but it would have been too much effort. Why had she wanted to go on this dumb trip anyway? What kind of vacation was more work than actually doing her job?  


She trudged on, her boots crunching the snow deeper into the ground, sinking the group’s path further below the surface of the snow. A long trough stretched out behind them for miles, leading all the way back to basecamp. They’d taken the snow trucks from that little coastal station to the basecamp, but the guide said the glacier was too fragile to drive up. And so they walked on. Only another ten miles to go, she thought, sullenly.  


Lunch couldn’t have come sooner. The group stopped at an outcropping of stone that formed the base of large hill. The stones poked through the snow just enough to work as seats, and Hana plopped down with a huff. It’d only been the first six hours of the day’s climb, and she already felt exhausted. Her companion, however did not. And that did not make Hana feel better.  


“These are so good,” Brigitte Lindholm said, munching happily on an energy bar.  
Hana had to admit it: she wasn’t wrong.  


“Are you doing okay?” the Swedish woman asked, eyeing her girlfriend.  


Hana could only look up at her, lips pressed together in a slight frown.  


“You’re feeling like this was the wrong choice for your holiday?”  


She didn’t reply, but her expression gave her up. Hana’s eyes rose to meet Brig’s, and she forced a smile. Brigitte had jumped at the chance to have Hana to herself for several weeks, and hadn’t even flinched at the prospect of spending them in an Antarctic wasteland, following around the entries in the doctor’s journal. She had just flashed that smile and that was that. Y  


“It’s only the wrong choice if you don’t get anything out of it, little kanin.” 

All too quickly, they were back up and on the trail, lugging their gear still further across snow-swept dunes of ice and rock. Icy wind whipped around them, biting at her nose and cheeks, and she pulled her scarf back up, tight around her face.  


“Enderby Land is magnificent,” the journal had read. “Nowhere else have I felt so alone, and so completely connected to the world around us. It’s as though by being here, so far from any other humans, I can feel the heartbeat of our planet. Hoping to get good readings from the Eco station observation equipment here.”  


She looked around, trying to feel connected to humanity, or the Earth, or something. But she just felt tired, cold, and foolish.  


They made their checkpoint a couple hours before dark and settled in to camp. The wind whistled around their tents, but within she and Brigitte found warmth together. They lay huddled in the tent, basking in each other’s warmth, when Hana spoke.  


“It’s so pretty here.”  


Brigitte nodded in agreement, her eyes half closed as sleep loomed over them.  


“But I don’t know what I was thinking.” The usually confident, even cocky Song was stuck on this point. It kept at her. Why wasn’t this so fulfilling? She’d read every journal entry, loved every minute of those wild adventures around the globe. And yet being here didn’t feel right. She tried to explain it to Brigitte, but it just came out jumbled and confused.  


“Maybe you’re just not a scientist, kär,” replied Brigitte, mumbling through her sleepiness. “Maybe that was her journey, maybe something else is yours.”  


Hana lay there for several minutes, her mind fighting the exhaustion. Maybe that was right. Maybe she was just trying to hard? She did tend to get a little carried away sometimes, if she was being honest.  


She laid back, snuggling up in the warmth of Brig’s embrace. 

They reached the summit the next morning, and as they did, Brigitte concluded that there was something different in Hana today. Something seemed more confident, but also more at peace (an unusual situation for the eternally-competitive woman).  


The two found a place apart from the group, where they could look out over everything. Hundreds of miles of ice stretched out before them, sloping down toward the sea. From up here, it gave the impression that one could ski all the way down to the ocean in one fell swoop. It was very pretty, Brigitte had to agree. She looked over at Hana.  


“You seem...better.”  


“I think I figured it out,” Hana replied, smiling over at her.  


“What did you figure out?”  


“Doctor Zhou’s journal. I loved it because it took me places, places I couldn’t go, because of my work back home.”  


“It took years just to get the leave time for this,” Brigitte agreed.  


“For me, Mei-Ling’s journals were a way to go other places. But for her, they were her calling. This isn’t me, though. I belong at home.”  


“You belong in a MEKA, or in your gaming rig.”  


They shared a smile. Brigitte had always loved seeing her little gremlin at work, her eyes lit up and fingers no more than blurs across the keys. But beyond that public side all her fans got to see, Brigitte knew a much deeper side to the woman. She wasn’t surprised the pilot had had this whole inner journey. She put an arm around Hana and pulled her tight.  


“Thank you for coming with me,” Hana said softly as the two looked out over the Antarctic wastes.  


“What can I say, it was a good workout,” Brigitte replied.  


Hana scoffed and feigned a shove against Brig’s side, pretending to try and break free, but the Swede held her tight. “And spending time with you, my sweet, my Älskling, my kanin, is always worth it.” 

The two made it back down to base camp and found the rest of the journey much lighter, and not just because they had devoured several dozen energy bars.


End file.
